Back Door : Catcote

I first heard of Back Door while researching a sample from a Beastie Boys record. They had a song called "Stand Together" on their 1992 LP, Check Your Head, that sampled a Back Door track called "Slivadiv". If you know the song you'd instantly recognize the crazed honking sax riff they borrowed.

Anyway, we tracked the record down in the hallowed annals of WRUW and gave it a listen. I thought it interesting, but not spectacular. Years later, I ran across it on some sort of P2P network and pulled it down because I wanted to hear the sample in context again.  But I listened to the whole album a couple of times and it grew on me.

Back Door is a bass-drums-sax trio that plays music along the lines of progressive rock or jazz-rock fusion like Mahavishnu Orchestra or Return to Forever.  This particular song starts off with a bang, rocking hard from the get-go, hammering a staccato jazz riff a couple of times to make sure you really get it.  Then they toss in a quick variation or two and head right into the solo.  I love when the sax player first takes a breath and someone in the background yells "Yeah!"  They're absolutely right.  The sax wails through the solo over a furiously funky backbeat and the band finishes off by beating on the riff one more time.  This whirlwind of a song is a concise chunk of rock that never lets up on the energy.  It reminds me a little of the highly engineered rock of the Ruins.

"Catcote" is from Back Door's self-titled debut from 1973.  The whole album is great, especially if you like jazz-rock fusion.  The band was notable for using the bass as a lead instrument along with sax and for being one of the first groups to use chords on the bass.  The songs range from soft ballads to full-on riff-rockers like this one, but they're all pretty good.

[You can listen to Back Door's "Catcote" by navigating to the post "Song078" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]

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Steely Dan : Gaucho

You probably know who Steely Dan is. They're all over the FM dial, from the oldies stations to classic rock.  They've had a string of radio friendly hits like "Black Friday", "Peg", "Deacon Blues", "Hey Nineteen" and the awesome "Kid Charlemagne"

One thing I really like about Don and Walter is that they sculpt this production-perfect music, somewhere between 70's schlock and smooth jazz, which should by all rights be just terrible. But it's amazing stuff. Not all of it, not all of it. Some of it bombs, but more often than not, it's great listening. And then, once you're grooving along to their sound, stop a minute and listen to their lyrics. It's all about pop-culture references, drinking, drugs and sex. Seriously. I mean, they named the band after a giant metal dildo. They take these semi-taboo subjects and dress them up in FM-ready baubles, where the execs and the sheep ate 'em up and Walt and Don laughed all the way to the bank.

So, the danger about putting up a song by Steely Dan is that everybody has an opinion on them already. You already probably 'know' whether you like Steely Dan or not.  If so, yay.  If not, I don't think this song will change your mind.

I had a couple of tunes I could have gone with. There's "Kid Charlemagne," about a guy who sells drugs, which is probably my favorite Steely Dan song and is easily up in the top 100 songs of all time. There's "Don't Take Me Alive" about a guy on a tower with a rifle. There's "The Fez" which is about wearing a condom when you have sex. ("Ain't never gonna do it without my fez on.") All of these come from The Royal Scam which I actually discovered first on vinyl back when I worked at a record store. I thought about going with something from Two Against Nature, a newer album from 2000, which is actually pretty good. But instead I dug deep and went with "Gaucho" from the album of the same name.

"Gaucho" is about a confrontation between a guy in a club and another person who brought along a friend who is a total poser. Writing a song about something like that is enough for me to like it. The lyrics are dripping with smarmy cynicism, culminating in the chorus: "Who is the gaucho, amigo? Why is he standing in your spangled leather poncho and your elevator shoes?" You get a vivid picture of two guys out in the lobby arguing about this completely oblivious interloper standing next to them who's "snapping his fingers like a fool."

It took me a while to get into this song. The instrumentation is pretty standard soft rock, but the melody in both the verse and chorus is very abstruse. It's complicated, jagged, a little off.  For Steely Dan, it's actually somewhat difficult listening. You might call it progressive or even jazzy, I suppose, but it definitely doesn't swing. Still, I really like the chorus. It's fun to sing along with both for the melody and the lyrics.

Anyway, give this one a couple of listens to sink in and see if it doesn't grow on you. "Gaucho" comes from their 1980 LP, Gaucho which was their last effort before they 'broke up' for twenty years. I have this one on vinyl too, but the version you're hearing comes from their excellent box set, Citizen Steely Dan. I picked it up for like $30 used, I think. Definitely a worthwhile investment.

[You can listen to Steely Dan's "Gaucho" by navigating to the post "Song070" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]

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Uzeda : Surrounded

Uzeda is a heavy proggish rock band, along the lines of Helmet, Dazzling Killmen or Jesus Lizard.  Some call it 'math rock' which is probably appropriate, as it's concerned with rhythms, particularly non-standard ones.  Some call it 'post rock' which totally doesn't make sense, because that implies that they aren't rock, which implies that they don't rock, which makes no sense at all, because they totally fucking rock.  So, yeah, that's stupid.

Formed in 1987, Uzeda hails from Sicily (yes, in Italy).  The band is fronted by a nondescript Italian woman, Giovanna Cacciola, who screams the lyrics in slightly broken English.  Their music is loud, coarse, angular, with a great sense of dynamics and a mastery of tension and release.  It's nearly atonal, but it still completely rocks.

They released a Steve Albini-produced EP in 1995 on the excellent Touch & Go label that is four songs and ten short minutes of awesome.  I almost chose a song called "Sleep Deeper", mostly because with Giovanna's accent, it sounds like she's shouting about a "Sleepy Bird", but I went instead with the lead song, "Surrounded".  The song starts with a stutter, introducing its circular riff interlaced with open vocals.  Then the band goes at it in earnest, hammering away on the riff until it can barely take the weight anymore.  Listen for the break where they drop to a completely different, far thinner guitar sound for a few measures of respite, before launching back into the full-fledge frontal assault.  It's a vicious pounding of a song. Play it loud.

"Surrounded" comes from Uzeda's 1995 EP, 4.  I also have Stella, their most recent release (2006) after
a lengthy hiatus, but it's not nearly as good.  There are a couple of good songs, but they tend to drag on (none of the songs on 4 are over three minutes), and they lose their impetus and forget to rock.  I haven't heard any of their other stuff.

[You can listen to Uzeda's "Surrounded" by navigating to the post "Song065" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]

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Jethro Tull : For a Thousand Mothers

I think Jethro Tull gets a bit of a bum rap in the rock world. Maybe it's because, while half their songs rock heavy ("Aqualung", "Hymn 43", "Cross-Eyed Mary"), the other half sounds like they were stolen from the local Renaissance Faire. Or, maybe it's because they stole the first Heavy Metal Grammy out from under Metallica's "One", even though Metallica had completely blown the song out live on-stage for the Grammy audience not more than fifteen minutes previous.

But Tull (as the fanboys call them) can throw down some serious licks. Say what you will, but their heavy songs are heavy, full of slightly broken proggy blues riffs and furious drumming. And of course, props to Ian Anderson for actually making the flute work as a rock instrument. He gets that thing howling as angrily as any sax or guitar out there. I once knew a flautist who hated Jethro Tull because Ian just played the flute wrong, to which I can only say, "Well, fuck you then" because you're missing the whole point of rock music in the first place.

Speaking of fuck-you's, even though the title sounds like a tribute, it's not exactly Mother's Day material. This piece is a bit of a kiss off to all the mothers and fathers out there who cast doubts on the dreams of their offspring. He's made it, and he's picking you up at eight in his limo to remind you just how seriously wrong you were.

"For a Thousand Mothers" is a serious rocker, with a prog bent. The guitar hammers the riffs hard and is matched in lockstep by the bass and drums, grooving on this 6/8 (maybe 12/8?) rhythm that shifts back and forth between twos and threes. Meanwhile, Ian shreds his flute, seriously pushing it to the limits with all sorts of nasty overtones crashing over the top. There's even a killer post-verse breakdown with just unaccompanied flute. And on top of all this, Ian delivers his parental kiss-off, which is thinly disguised by a rather nice melody. Very hummable.

Then, finally, after the song has been sung and the music fades, they go at it some more. It sounds like they looked at each other and decided, "Screw it, let's jam some more," and they kick it back into gear and jam for another sixty seconds or so, which unfortunately gets the fade out a second time.

You can find "For a Thousand Mothers" on Jethro Tull's 1968 release, Stand Up, which is a great LP, even with all the fay medieval stuff.

Actually, that's stuff's nice too. I just don't want you to think I'm a pansy.

[#38]

Emerson, Lake & Palmer : Bitches Crystal

Somehow, Emerson, Lake & Palmer became the poster boys for overwrought, overthought, overblown, craptastic progressive rock; a title which, by all rights and means, ought to go to The Moody Blues, or maybe Marillion. The problem is, all these prog guys were really great musicians. And sometimes great musicians get all wrapped up in the technique and think that the music is about their musicianship and they forget that music needs to be about the music first. Plus, when you're that egotistical, even if you have the chops, it ticks people off. Except for Yngwie Malmsteen fans, who can only be explained by some sort of mass hypnosis.

Regardless, even though some of ELP's stuff could get a little tedious, if you dig a little into their LPs, especially their early stuff, you can find some amazing rock. This is no surprise in that Greg Lake was a founding member of King Crimson, Keith Emerson came from the Nice, and Carl Palmer was with... er, Atomic Rooster.

The tune begins with a little piano noodling, then dives right into the rock. Once it gets going, the song is terminally busy, notes are everywhere. The bass drives the rock, while Carl is just all over the drums, banging away like he's determined to hit as many of his drums as possible in a four minute period without losing the beat. Meanwhile, Keith beats his electric piano up until it's bruised, with not one but two awesome solos, and Greg angrily howls the vocals over the top.

And the lyrics. They're full of evil powers and witches, tortured spirits and ritual killings, all sorts of dark, fanciful images. But when you break it down ... I still don't know what they're talking about. Who's the bitch? Who's the 'you'? I'm just not sure, which I guess just makes it good poetry, so throw whatever meaning on it you like. It still rocks.

"Bitches Crystal" is on ELP's second outing, 1971's Tarkus, which is conceptually about the military-industrial complex. Hence the motorized armadillo on the cover, I suppose.

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Can : Halleluhwah

Most folks, when they think of the prototypical German music, they imagine Kraftwerk, pristine, precise and mechanical, with neither a hair or a note out of place. But for me, the kings of the German rock scene are Can. They are the anti-Kraftwerk. They are dirty and funky, they improvise, they experiment, they rock.
Can started out in '68 as a bunch of German musicians, rooted in avantgarde classical and jazz music, and an African-American poet & singer named Malcolm Mooney. Malcolm only made it about an album and a half before he suffered a nervous breakdown and had to quit the band. After he left, they drafted Damo Suzuki, a wandering Japanese busker, who stayed with them through the rest of the second album and proceeded to record three seminal albums with the band. Damo's vocals are... unique. Sometimes he sings in English (I'm pretty sure) and sometimes in Japanese (I think). And sometimes I think he just makes shit up. But it doesn't matter, because, like the improvisation from the rest of the band, it always fits the song exactly right.

Can was equally inspired by the avantgarde and experimental movements sweeping through Europe in the 60's, by the progressive rock movement, also sweeping the continent in the 60's, and by funk, which might have made it to the continent, but not so you could really tell. If you ask me who my favorite drummers are, number one is John Bonham and number two would be Jaki Liebezeit. He could bring the funk like nobody's business. He had this amazing way of skittering across the drum set, performing what sometimes amounts to one giant drum solo, while keeping a funk groove going non-stop. He was as funky as Clyde Stubblefield or Zigaboo Modeliste and he was German.

Tago Mago was Can's first full outing with Damo and it has the rawness of the first album, but pulled in jazzier direction with more open structures. To me, "Halleluhwah" (not Hallelujah mind you) epitomizes all that is Can. It's raw, open and funky. On top of the funk, there's guitar riffage, electronic noodling, a violin solo and whatever else the boys can think to bring to the table. And of course, there's Damo's near-brilliant vocals. I'm not exactly sure what he's saying, something about his brother, I'm pretty sure, but he means it. And it's long; it clocks in at over 18 minutes of awesome and never dulls. And did I mention it's funky? Jaki and Holger Czukay rock that rhythm hard for the entire song. A brilliant song off a brilliant album from a brilliant band.

My personal mp3 of this song is over 26mb, so I had to scale it back to mono (you don't lose much) and resample it to 56kbps, which is the equivalent of 112kbps stereo. That still puts it at nearly 8mb, but I listened to it and I think it sounds fine. So, enjoy this truly epic piece. As I mentioned before you can find it on their 1971 release, Tago Mago. Although if you are just starting out with Can, I'd probably recommend Ege Bamyasi as a better LP to start with, then work forward and backward from there.

[You can listen to Can's "Halleluhwah" by navigating to the post "Song012" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]

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